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Speakers

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Vanessa Burkoski, RN, PhD

Dr. Vanessa Burkoski is the Chief Nursing Executive and Chief, People Strategy at Humber River Hospital. In this role, Dr. Burkoski provides leadership that fosters inter-professional and cross-functional collaboration with a laser focus on safety, quality, and patient and family-centered care. Dr. Burkoski is passionate about evidence-based practice and the creation of an engaging, healthy, and scholarly practice environment in which health professionals can maximize their contribution to positive patient, organizational and system outcomes. Advocating for excellence in professional practice, Dr. Burkoski is committed to providing the highest quality, safest, care experience for patients and families. Dr. Burkoski embodies the philosophy and aptitude of patient and family centered care and plays a pivotal role in driving high reliability. Dr. Burkoski has extensive experience providing executive leadership, strategic advice and nursing expertise on a wide range of nursing and health care policy issues. From 2011 to 2016 Dr. Burkoski served as Chief Nursing Executive/Professional Scholarly Practice at London Health Sciences Center where amongst her many accomplishments she led their success as one of Canada's top Best Practice Spotlight Organizations (BPSOs). From 2007-2011 as the Provincial Chief Nursing Officer she provided strategic policy advice to the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, conceptualizing and facilitating the implementation of a wide-range of evidence-based, innovative program and policy initiatives. Dr. Burkoski's values-based, evidence-informed and courageous leadership is recognized provincially, nationally and internationally. A proud Registered Nurse and past-president of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, Dr. Burkoski holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Master of Science in Nursing, and Doctorate in Health Administration. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Windsor and Queen’s University, and holds an academic appointment at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto.

Régine Laurent, RN, Analyst, TVA

Régine Laurent was President of the Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (Quebec Interprofessional Federation of Health) from June 2009 to December 2017. This union organization represents more than 75,000 nurses, nurse assistants, respiratory therapists and clinical perfusionists. Among many issues, Régine Laurent has been at the heart of the fight for pay equity and has led two major negotiations with the Quebec government. During these negotiations, the FIQ achieved major historic gains for healthcare professionals. Régine Laurent is known for her candour. Retired since December 2017, she joins LCN-TVA as an analyst on occasion.

Barbara Sattler, RN, MPH, DrPH, FAAN

Dr. Sattler is a Professor at the University of San Francisco and an international leader in environmental health and nursing. She is a founding and active member of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments (www.enviRN.org), an international organization that is helping to integrate environmental health into nursing education, practice, research, and policy/advocacy. While at the University of Maryland, she directed the Maryland Hospitals for Healthy Environments, a 10-year statewide initiative that helped hospitals develop sustainable policies and practices to achieve the triple bottom line of employee health, patient health, and ecological health. Dr. Sattler has worked at the local, national, and international level to improve nurses’ capacity to address environmental health. She is the author of Environmental Health and Nursing, and a host of peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Sattler is a Registered Nurse with an MPH and DrPH from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.

Mike Villeneuve, RN, M.Sc.

With four decades of progressive experience in the health-care system, Mike Villeneuve has worked in all the domains of nursing practice — direct care, administration, education, research and policy. He was appointed chief executive officer of CNA in June 2017. He leads the Ottawa-based organization’s team and operations as it works for its more than 139,000 members across all 13 Canadian provinces and territories and hundreds of First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities. In his role, he is helping to implement a forward-leaning vision for professional nursing in Canada and the related services needed at CNA to support that transformation. Since 2000, Mike has held teaching, executive and consulting roles with the federal Office of Nursing Policy, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, the Academy of Canadian Executive Nurses, CNA and its National Expert Commission, and the Lawrence S. Bloomberg faculty of nursing at the University of Toronto. Prior to returning to CNA as CEO, Mike led his own consultancy in health policy analysis, research, strategy and communication, serving governments, professional associations, unions and universities across Canada and internationally. During the 1990s, Mike was an educator and then patient care manager in the neuro intensive care and neuro/trauma/plastics units at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. One of three authors of CNA’s centennial history book, Mike also is author of Public Policy and Canadian Nursing: Lessons from the Field (2017), the first Canadian text focused on nursing and public policy. Mike lives on unceded Algonquin territory in rural Eastern Ontario, where he is proud to serve as the Chair of the Board of Directors at Winchester District Memorial Hospital—one of Ontario’s highest-performing small community hospitals.

Royal Orr, journalist, teacher, and affiliate member of the Ingram School of Nursing

Royal Orr is a strategic communications advisor and trainer with a career background in community organizing, journalism and broadcasting, and leadership training. Royal is the Founder and Principal of Les Communications Royal Orr, a Senior Faculty Member at the Canada School of Public Service in Ottawa, an Associate of the Telfer Centre for Executive Leadership of the University of Ottawa, as well as an Affiliate Member of Faculty at the Ingram School of Nursing in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. As a community organizer, he was the Executive Director of the Townshippers’ Association and the volunteer President of Alliance Quebec in the 1980’s in Quebec. Royal became a radio personality in Montreal first with CJAD and then as the host of the CBC Radio morning show. He was also the voice of Canada’s national open line radio show, Cross Country Check-up, and the host and director of a number of award winning documentaries on VisionTV reporting on development and justice issues in Colombia, the Philippines, and Trinidad. He moved from journalism to the field of communications and public relations and held the position of president of the multi-media production unit at Columbia Communications and vice president at Cossette Communications in Montreal as well as starting his own consultancy. Royal has given strategic communications counsel and leadership and spokesperson training to organizations as diverse as the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, McGill University, General Motors (US), Cirque du Soleil, and the Government of Abu Dhabi. He has a B.A. (Honours Religion) from Bishop’s University and did graduate studies at McMaster University with the Canadian philosopher George Grant. Royal is Chairman of the Board of the Montreal City Mission and lives in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.